Engine heating processes, equipment and systems consume electric power to warm engines allowing the engines to start and run at full load rapidly as compared to cold engines. With ever increasing of costs of energy, systems and methods of managing energy consumption by engine heaters are desired. For example, data center organizations, hospitals organizations, transportation organizations, may desire to reduce power consumption of engine heaters arranged with engines in systems of these organizations to reduce cost.
Existing engine heating processes, equipment and systems have limited awareness of an engine's environment. For instance, engine heaters have traditionally been utilized at an engine level (e.g., a standby generator at a datacenter), and arranged to be aware of only an electric utility power to keep the generator warm. For example, a datacenter organization may install an engine heater, on a backup generator, configured to consume only electricity from a public utility to keep the generator warm until a critical time of use. While this approach helps ensure that the generator will be ready to operate at a critical time of need, it does not provide visibility to available and potentially lower cost, alternative energy sources to keep the generator warm.
A user, technician, facilities administrator, or other individual may view information associated with an engine heater through an interface. For example, the interface may display an icon corresponding to an engine heater's status (i.e., heater on or off), temperature, pressure, and/or presence of fluid. However, due to a lack of the engine heater's awareness, the interface cannot display icons corresponding to an availability of alternate energy sources. Moreover, due to the lack of the engine heater's awareness, the interface cannot display icons corresponding to user inputs arranged to remotely manage the engine heater's consumption of alternate energy sources.